It has been a big week for owners, which may be why Al Davis' particular agony seems to be such a local story. I mean, all he has is a coach with a bad record, a long contract and a disturbing history of bad temper.

In Los Angeles, there's familial cannibalism. In Washington, there are suggestions of pure black-hearted evil. In Cleveland, there are extended meetings with men who enjoy dressing as dogs. In Memphis, there is a man defending his coach against the attacks of his most marketable star after one game.

In sum, the meek may never inherit the earth, but these days the strong are watching it sift through their fingers.

Yes, the Tom Cable quagmire is a fascinating tale, one with moral, contractual and athletic implications that haven't yet fully been mined.

The multileveled stalemate has reached a temporary lull, although the National Organization for Women kept the topic alive Thursday when they called for Cable's suspension pending an investigation.

In reality, the NFL can't do anything because the only verified incident happened two decades ago. For the same reason, Davis can't fire him with cause, and he won't fire him without it. Cable is frightened that he will be fired, the players are even more baffled than they were in the final days of the Lane Kiffin quagmire, or the Art Shell quagmire before that.

In short, we're sort of all talked, thought and suggested out until something new actually happens, like Glenda Cable, the coach's second wife, recanting her recantation of her divorce filing.

In the meantime, there's L.A., where Frank and Jamie McCourt have turned their divorce and their relationship to the Dodgers into a full-on blood feud - front-page stuff every day as it gets messier and more publicly bitter. Even without the baseball component, this would be a lawyer's cheeriest case ever.

There's Washington, where Danny Snyder's stewardship of the Redskins has become so painfully inept that he felt compelled to apologize to fans at a charity event for what has become its own local embarrassment. That was before the former Redskins icon John Riggins said Snyder has "a dark heart," and then assistant coach Greg Blache held an interview to defend Snyder from Riggins - all while the Redskins are supposed to be preparing for Atlanta.

There's Cleveland, where publicity-shy owner Randy Lerner held a two-hour session with two members of the famed Browns fan group, the Dawg Pound, to pledge greater fan relations efforts. That, after he fired head coach Eric Mangini's chosen general manager George Kokinis and director of football operations Erin O'Brien allegedly resigned as part of the wreckage of the team's worst season since its 1999 expansion year whimper.

And there's Memphis, where Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley went out of his way to sign Allen Iverson only to find out that he would have to defend his coach, Lionel Hollins, from Iverson's complaints that he didn't want to come off the bench.

Indeed, Heisley, having to defend his old coach from his new star two games into a new season, has it easy. The color of his heart has not been questioned. He isn't going through a hideous public divorce in the worst city on the planet to go through one. He isn't talking on serious subjects to men dressed as dogs.

And he isn't Al Davis, trying to measure the value of $3.5 million, give or take, against his legacy and the destruction of a seventh consecutive football season because of his failure, or refusal, to fully vet his head coach.

Cable's incidents with Randy Hanson and Sandy Cable (which we know of) and alleged incidents with Marie Lutz and Glenda Cable (not yet verified but worthy of further study) are different than Davis' other coaching conundra. But they are the worst-case result of an owner who neither holds the job of coach and its holders to a higher standard nor allows them the freedom of ideas and execution to achieve that standard.

He now has to find out: whether he can fire Cable without paying him; what might happen to Glenda Cable if Cable can no longer support her and their children; if there is a coach who will get the respect of a roster that knows nothing of coaches who are taken seriously; and if he can repair the legacy that stopped growing more than 20 years ago and has entered a downward spiral for most of the last decade.

And yet, Davis still in better shape right now than the McCourts or Snyder, plus he doesn't have to talk to dog-faced men to show he has their best interests in mind.

So yes, it really could be worse for the Raiders. And we hesitate to say that, because they do have that gift for finding "worse." I mean, you thought the overhead projector news conference couldn't be topped, and look how wrong you were.